Who in their right mind would want to be a politician?

Thankless task, it is. I mean – for example – there you are, minding your own business and making up wish-list promises for a bamboozled electorate, when some bloke dressed up as a bumble bee glues himself to your bus and grabs all the attention.

And you have to be nice to him, chat politely, make a few more hollow but public promises – when what you really want to do is finish the Christmas shopping, get home to your furry slippers and glug mulled wine.

Or you turn up at a palace reception for NATO’s 70th birthday, determined to behave well, but get caught on camera sniggering with your mates about Donald Trump, who you’d been pretty sure was out of earshot.

You could find yourself having to admit nobody likes you much but insist that shouldn’t stop anybody voting for you. Because it’s not about personalities, it’s a general election campaign. And nobody’s entirely sure what that’s about.

No way is politicking a job for grown-ups. Thank goodness that by this time next week the bluff, double bluff and bluster will all be over... or maybe starting over?

The main players will sidle off, stage left – or right – into their boxes again and leave us to carry on with the important things in life, like stockpiling for the traditional attack of chronic indigestion and an inevitable slide into the red.

Shenanigans in the Westminster bubble make most of us thankful for the distance we are able to keep from the diseased heart of national political life. Not to mention giant bumble bees. Not many of those to the pound up here. At least none with pots of glue and a big bus fetish.

To say this was supposed to have been a snap election, it seems to have been going on for ever. Heartily sick of the whole thing now and not believing a single scripted word uttered by any of them, it has been like a punishment imposed on the many by the few – for offences we were unaware of having committed.

I was asked the other day how I would vote next Thursday.

“The way I always vote,” I said. “Secretly.”

The bloke looked a tad crestfallen and pressed on with his questioning, presumably hoping I might let slip some indication of intention.

It didn’t work. He got nothing. It being bitterly cold and riskily slippery underfoot, I suppose I should have felt sorry for him. But didn’t. We parted on good terms.

Interestingly, a Lib Dem leaflet put out in Cumbria, with wildly ambitious “promises”, pledged billions to tackle – amongst other things – climate emergency, to boost renewable energy and “insult” every home.

My, what hilarity was enjoyed by all other parties, choosing determinedly to conveniently forget all their own blunders. But we’re wise to all that stuff now, aren’t we? We’ve been insulated against the in-fighting and joshing of politicos with a prolonged attack of over-excitement.

It’s all terribly important, obviously. Too important to treat with such contempt, derision and deceit by the people we elect and pay handsomely to look after our country’s interests and fight locally for our own.

Will they? Who knows? Maybe they’ll all end up insulting us and our homes – if and when we next see them. But we do owe it to ourselves, our families and communities to give it our best shot.

I don’t trust any poll other than the one that counts. Largely because the pollster who received short shrift from me might well have been brushed off or wound up by everyone else he attempted to question.

The one that counts is just days away. For small mercies we should show gratitude. Soon the noise and stage-managed showboating will be over, for the time being. Surely that’s worth a vote.

Please use yours. It might not produce the result you’d hoped for but it really is just about all we have left in what passes for our democracy now.

And, in all honesty, it’s likely to be a lot more effective than a bumble bee costume and a tube of glue. Right?